Was the baker drunk?.
Photo: The Gothamist
Promoting activism in teacher education
By Bree Picower
Beat it! Defeat it! Racist cookies: We won't eat it!" chanted 38 undergraduates from the New York University Childhood and Special Education Teacher Education Program as they stood in front of the Lafayette Bakery in Greenwich Village, holding signs and chanting as part of one of their classes. As their professor for the last two semesters, first for a multicultural curriculum design course and now in a course on integrated children's literature, art, and technology, I knew that this group of preservice teachers had an awareness of social justice issues. They were excited about the idea of teaching from a social justice perspective, but had little firsthand experience taking social action themselves. In fact, only a handful of my majority white and middle-class students had ever participated in a public protest prior to this cold February evening. So how did we get to this moment where they passionately chanted, cheered, and talked to people passing by about "racist cookies"?
An email had circulated earlier that week through the NYU Department of Teaching and Learning about Lafayette Bakery. The owner was selling "Drunken Negro Head Cookies" in "honor" of President Obama. Yes: Drunken. Negro. Head. Cookies. (link to myfoxny.com story). When I received the email, I realized that the bakery was across the street from a field trip site that I had planned to take my students to the following week. As a teacher educator focused on social justice education, I began to wonder about how to take advantage of this teachable moment by incorporating this incident in my course. I sent the link to my students and asked them to bring one of our texts to class, The Kid's Guide to Social Action, by Barbara Lewis.
When the students arrived in class, my co-instructor and I played an updated news clip showing a protest in front of the bakery. The students discussed their reactions. Shock, outrage, disgust. Aminah talked about the amount of time, energy, and thought that must have gone into creating each of these caricatures?the effort the baker put into widening each nose, expanding the lips and coming up with a name he felt suited these cookies. These preservice teachers had already practiced designing social justice units, so on this night I had them break into groups and use the formats that we had been using throughout the year to create lesson plans and units to teach about this incident. Using The Kid's Guide to Social Action and keeping in mind the mandated literacy and math curricula in NYC schools, my students quickly brainstormed and created five-day units that integrated rigorous academics with this social issue. Essential questions and enduring understandings started to emerge: "Students will understand that racism is an issue that has affected us in the past and still affects us in the present." "Can we distinguish the line between freedom of expression and the issues of oppression?" "As a society, how can we hold people accountable for their actions?" "What tools can we use to express our ideas on social injustices?" One group made historical connections to the Greensboro sit-ins by incorporating Freedom on the Menu, an elementary-level book that one student had just read as part of a book club assignment. Another group planned a lesson that used the same methods that the baker used to spread racism to teach anti-racism by holding a "recipes for respect" bake sale in front of the bakery, offering "diversity donuts" and "social justice shortbread."
As Mariel said, "During the lesson planning activity I felt all of my anger about the cookies coming forward, but because I was planning this unit that covered the incident, racism, and social justice, I felt like I was able to take action in an effective manner." By providing an outlet for the outrage that many of them expressed, the students could do more than complain about the bakery?they could apply their teaching skills and desire to teach for social justice into tangible classroom activities. [The lesson plans are available online at http://www.edliberation.org/resources/records/beat-it-defeat-it-racist-cookies-we-wont-eat-it/view.]